Discussion

• waltc :

  It will be a irrelevant debate. Because the DLC is now redundant since K Street is directly funding(bribing)Democratic politicians.

  K Street now owns the Democratic leaders. Pols like Pelosi, Hoyer, Rahm, Murtha, Reid, Schumer, Pryor. These folks take their orders from the monied elite.

  I'd like to see Markos go after the Democrats K Street connection. But like a good DNC puppet he won't touch this.

  In regards to the Op-ed, Ford was right about Pelosi. She's been a disaster for the Democrats. A old school limosine liberal with a penchant for selling out the working class, she's accomplished little except for her pathetic minimum wage increase. At best she's a pinata for the GOP.

  As for the '06 election. The Democrats won because they ran populists not liberals not libertarian Democrats(Which seem to only exist in the minds of fevered kosi).

  And for the "center" Markos is most assurdely not standing in it. He's no more of a centrist than Ford or Pelosi is.
  

  Posted on August 11, 2007 9:49 AM

• Nebraska Nathan :

  Mr. Sirota,

  The KOS still lets the DLC ABUSE them and take their votes for granted. Hell, I got banned from DKos back in 2005 for loudly protesting Ben FUCKING Nelson. There I was kindly asking and suggesting that it's better to replace Ben FUCKING Nelson with a real Democrat but NOOOOOOO !!!! Most everyone except a couple of users from the rural lands desperately defends the motherfucker telling me a native Nebraskan that "The Democrats cannot afford to replace Ben Nelson because the GOP will easily snatch his seat." I then pointed out issue after issue how Ben FUCKING Nelson is pro-GOP, pro-rightwing, pro-Corporatist. Sure, two or three users begin to sympathize but still, the rest of the users invent BULLSHIT talk about Ben Nelson being less "anti-abortion" than Chuck Hagel or even try to bring up his empty promises of "helping the poor children" shit which he already wrote off the second he BARELY won in 2000. After the lame-brain responses, I was just outright fed up and in angry protest cursed and sweared against everyone who DARED tell me a Nebraskan that I have no right to choose whether to replace Ben FUCKING Nelson. I was finally labelled a "troll" and KICKED off DKos. Time and again, that stupid Markos who looks like an ILLEGAL ALIEN GAY would try to pretend that his users are taking the economic issues seriously but I know it's a pile of BULLSHIT. For every one rare post on the economy, environment, or even plans to get us out of Iraq, there are dozens of social BULLSHIT that relegate those important posts to the backend ! Let's see what the KOS will do if HITLERY wins the nomination but I'm already betting 10 trillion dollars that they will see to it that all her backstabbing records will get hidden from the audiences and they'll do their GOTV shit and SUPERFAIL just like they did in 2004 after Kerry got DRUBBED !

  Posted on August 11, 2007 11:07 AM

• butte :

  The DNC would gain a lot more credibility with the voters, if they booted the DLC, and stopped supporting those Republi-lite losers.
  Every time the Democrat Losership Council opens its mouth it proves to the public that there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans.
  No wonder the Democrats barely picked up enough seats to get majorities in the House and Senate. Democrat candidates for legislature need to show they are clearly BETTER than the Republican incumbent, not just as bad. People will always go with the devil they know rather than the devil they don't know.
  Makes you wonder if the DLC is actually composed of Republicans bent on sabotaging Democratic candidates.
  

  Posted on August 12, 2007 8:10 AM

• waltc :

  The DLC is no longer relevant to todays Democratic party. Since the '06 elections Democrats have been taking money directly from K Street bagmen and bypassing middle-men like the DLC.

  K Street is now the new DLC with a bi-partisan twist. They bribe anyone they can.

  Thats how you get people like Dingel fighting CAFE standards, Rangel and Pelosi promoting a secret and illegal trade deal, Murtha putting in multi-million dollar earmarks for campaign contributors, Sen Levine making the Marine corps buy equipment that will kill and maim Marines once deployed because LockheedMartin tells him too. Reid derailing legislation.

  And there are no such thing as DINOs. Basically all a DINO is, is a bought off Democrat who works for big business and not the voters. Ideology has nothing to do with it.

  As always follow the money trail and you can find out who owns the politician in question.

  Posted on August 12, 2007 10:38 AM

• 3rdOption :

  Here's where I disagree with both dKos and Sirota:

  "The DLC had two decades to make its case... that the mushy, indistinguishable "middle" is where the American people want to be." - cited editorial

  I am a centrist. I believe in common sense and pragmatics over foolish, juvenile idealism and the self-deceiving comforts of a political doctrine.

  Ideologies are almost always wrong. They are narrow-minded templates, with limited boundaries and applicability, in breadth, depth, and most certainly, over time. At best, an ideology can ameliorate certain specific issues over a relatively short period. But ideologues and their followers want to use their rule set to forcibly "solve" every problem, forever. When simple-minded followers (a redundancy) get their paws on a simplistic belief system (which an ideology must be, to be popular), inevitably lives are damaged, societies devastated.

  You have every politically active fool initially successfully pushing round pegs through round holes, and then forcibly jamming every square, triangular, oval, oblong, and trapezoidal peg through that same set of round holes, belligerently disregarding all the hurt and chaos they are causing, simply to feed their precarious sense of identity.

  "If I'm not a whatever-ist, then I must be nothing."

  Further, established ideologies, in other words, those with a rabid following, are used to control people. They play to people's pride and their desperate need to belong to a group. Liars then hijack them and run amok.

  That's what the Limbaugh-clones have done (and this is where the Hitler comparisons are, indeed, accurate). They have concocted a fake ideology, from a genuine one. They then sold it to blue collar Americans, insidiously drawing out those susceptible to bully lust. They convinced them not of what they should be for, but who they must despise, elitist academics and liberals. This is a higher tech version of how Hitler recruited his Brown Shirts. For him it was beer houses, for them, talk radio.

  The "conservatism" of Rush and FOX is a fake ideology, concocted for control.

  The DLC's claim to the middle, is also a willful deception. The DLC is not centrist, it is no ideology at all. it is a corrupt front for corporate influence, seeking to lull average Americans to sleep while they are fleeced.

  This is the bi-partisanship of the sell-out, the bribe-taker,the whore.

  You cannot blame the real center for the deceptions of the exploiters who pose and preen there. Likewise, "progressives" cannot take credit for the corrective actions emanating from the center.

  The "mushy middle", the majority of Americans, are not ideologues. They are not "liberals", "progressives", "conservatives", or "libertarians". They do not care about those "movements".

  The political force that is attempting to flush out the detritus of the corrupt Republicans and their fake religion and their fake conservatism is not a "progressive" movement. It is the predictable reaction of average folks who see things going horribly wrong, at a very precarious time. And those average folks will easily reject any replacements who play games instead of solving problems, no matter what team colors they wear.

  The progressive movement cannot take credit for the craven failure of the Republicans. The Republicans collapsed all on their own, crumbling from within.

  The actual center in America is simply comprised of folks with common sense and a nose for integrity, who believe in the principles of our Constitution, and want our society to be fair, our laws and enforcement just, our decision-making clean, and our foreign conduct... moral.

  Posted on August 12, 2007 2:17 PM